When information was scarce, we archived everything. Now information has become so abundant that we may as well be lamenting the failure to collect and store everyone's nail clippings. We are not losing history or experiencing amnesia – while collecting PROPORTIONATELY less information than in prior eras, we happen to collecting much, much more information in the ABSOLUTE sense.

By not saving everything we may lose stuff that feels important (as what will feel important is difficult to predict ahead of time). But we are passing on a much more detailed understanding of the Internet era, than any eras prior.

Another thing about digital copies of works that no one is talking about; is that said digital copies can be manipulated and distorted by internet hackers. 1984 by George Orwell puts this issue as a away to suppress people "right to remember". This is also an issue touched on by the Great Hideo Kojima in his game Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty.

wow. Amazing how the mention of that beautiful library still gets people excited. Something about Alexandria that gets the argument going. You made your point by providing the link to the Economist archives. Its Saturday in the January of 1857, I'm reading about the French Emperor and Dr. Watson just walked in.

It's outrageous to suggest that the Middle Ages were caused by the Library of Alexandria burning down. The Middle Ages came about in different places and different times as barbarians displaced Romans and Greeks as the rulers and aristocrats. Nobody learned Virgil and Homer any more, the new rulers could not guarantee the safety of travelers and merchants, long distance trade declined, etc. It wasn't not having certain texts that mattered, but it was that increasingly no one cared to read or copy the ones that they already had.

We can't know if books worked better than internet because we can't quantify the amount of data lost during previous milleniums, precisely because it's lost.

We all know the story of the Great Library.
And many books disapeared because language evolved and the book became obsolete, because shelves were full and space was needed, because some institution declared the book blasphemer, because people disagree with the author even if he was right, and so on.

And it's the same thing about internet. Competition is keeping only the useful informations.
Our life is to short to read half of all books published each year in the world. And do we read many 19th century novels ? Only the good ones.
We'll see in a thousand of years how Harry Potter is classify.

Indeed, the ephemeral nature of the Internet's representations of data only compound the transitory nature of yesterday's news. The dim and flickering light moves on, with only fleeting ghosts to mark its passage.

Can I kindly ask the The Economist if they could write an article on a similar topic exploring open source vs commercial source and paid software vs free software.

One can respect that commercial software writers go through the effort of writing a software in order to earn an income. However, what happens when the software has become so old that all patents and copy rights have expired? Generally the commercial sources/companies try add bells and whistles, minor tweaks called upgrades to extend the life of the software. And in Microsoft's case they have even changed the full face of the software as a last ditch attempt to implement a copyright on software that they actually copied themselves (Excel, Word). Open source software writers have interesting motivation to spending hours developing software, partly to show they can beat the commercial writers and partly to create an idea that millions of people will use. Will this lead to fame and fortune? I don't know.

Free software has radically changed the landscape of software development. Gone are the days when people were readily prepared to pay for software. Advertising on free software has radically changed how people view their business model for creating software but is it enough?

Will Microsoft succeed in getting people to pay for the recent upgrades of MS Windows, Excel and Word when their is Ubuntu and Open office available for free? According to Linux supporters, there are already more than 30 million Linux/Ubuntu users world wide, this makes Linux/Ubuntu the second most used operating system behind Microsoft's Windows but ahead of Apple's OS.

From this view point, Open Source Free Software has become an incredible threat to the Commercial Paid Software. What will the future hold?

Anyone who capitalises Free Software seems to be on some kind of mission. Your OS stats are way off. The only personal Linux version that is going anywhere is Android.

The fact is that, historically, most software has been open source. The internet being one of the examples par excellence. Closed versus open source is a false dichotomy that reflects a limited period where software was distributed in a shrink-wrapped form. In the 1960s computers came with source and manuals for the source because that was the only way to work them! We are now moving to a time where software is no longer distributed physically and the economics are changing to match.

I write this as someone who contributes to various open source projects.

I guess if there is anything the internet engenders, it's hubris.
In comparison with the ancient library at Alexandria, almost all of the current content of all the web servers could be lost without a ripple in the collective IQ. We might even see the beginning of a new age of Enlightenment.
There is an overemphasis on the news of now compared to anything that happened before the internet.

Just think of how many collections of ebooks, photos, videos, and music files have been destroyed by the RIAA and MPAA in their anti-piracy crusade. It's a damn shame that such vast stores of information were wiped out overnight.

Well, it must be somehow easy to produce digital versions of little books like Hemingway's, Dickens', Albert Camus, and Paulo Coelho as well... But I'd love to double dare GOOGLE to produce and commercialize digital editions (more or less trustworthy) of truly classic deeds like the 'Corpus Iuris Civile' of Emperor Justinian, the 'Institutas' of Gaius, the Tractatus Panormitanus, and the Rhodian Manual of Maritime Commerce, just to give a few examples... If 900 years ago, a bunch of 4 or 5 Bolognese Scholars (philologists) could find, compile and interpret all the [burnt, torn and very barely understandable] Roman Jurisprudence using only paper and pencils/ chalks, I don't see why Wikipedia couldn't hire a team of 20 scientists, philosophers and jurists, ONLY to make anotations and more solid synthesis of books like the ones mentioned... Slack or (economical/ political) convenience?

What interesting to me is that while the internet has increased the odds that any one piece of information stored on it gets lost forever, it has also greatly increased the amount of knowledge available to any single person. Pick a complicated task you know nothing about -- then google it. I bet you can learn how to do it in a day.

As far as I see the Web archive does not store "closed" sites, i.e such as Facebook, Flickr etc. Or am I wrong? However, it is very impresive that they made it as early as they did, and how they manage to cope with all that information. Another problem with old data is as someone here are saying formats. Imagine what happens when were are not able to view jpg files anymore.

I completely agree that its very tiresome and hard to keep documents because the formats of documents keep changing. I have the following important documents with me:
1960s: Reel to Reel recordings of my parents and 80mm films of child hood. The films have been digitized in multiple formats because I was lucky enough to have a medium which still worked after 50 years.
1970s: 1000's of slides and negatives.
Various school art projects
1980-1993: All my important high school papers and essays, my diaries, my letters received. All my college papers undergraduate. 6 drafts of books I wrote.
1993-2005: ZERO emails even though I did try to save them but somewhere along the line it became impossible.
ZERO record of the 4/5 websites I made including my wedding website.
Probably a 25% savings on photos as its impossible to keep updating libraries unless you are a professional.
ZERO post graduate papers
ZERO record of 3 books I drafted in Wordpress.
I dont think you should save everything but the article makes a fair point - in the digital age you have to work to save things. Its not putting something in a box - its continually managing all your electronic devices, operating systems, file conversions, file management, etc. I now have 100% of what I want since 2005 but its a system where I purchase memory from two different providers, have a system for naming and filing and spend two full days a year upgrading the oldest files to the newest formats.